New York’s state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched its long-awaited congestion pricing program at midnight on Sunday, January 5. On the eighth day of the program, the MTA released data on its progress. As anyone who walked, drove, biked, or looked out a window in Manhattan could already tell, the $9 fee for private cars and SUVs (higher for trucks) to enter core Manhattan has significantly reduced traffic—for now. Bus riders have marveled at faster speeds, whether from New Jersey or down Fifth Avenue. Rush-hour walks were now pleasant, with previously blocked intersection crosswalks suddenly cleared for pedestrians.
This is a positive start, but it’s not the full story. We need to know how people are getting around—if they are getting around at all—without driving or riding into Midtown or downtown. Additionally, are the emptier streets safer, or are they more dangerous? As the MTA works against the clock to avoid potential interference in the program from the incoming Trump administration, it should provide crucial information as soon as it comes in.
Congestion pricing, signed into law in 2019 by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, has long seemed ill-starred. It was supposed to start in 2021 (sort of) but didn’t; its most recent delay was Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to “pause” its June 2024 launch date. Hochul then cut the car toll from a planned $15, setting a lower burden for a city still struggling since the Covid-19 lockdowns.
The data confirm anecdotes on the rollout. As the MTA reports, vehicle flow into the congestion zone—Manhattan below 60th Street—fell 7.5 percent last week, compared with the previous three Januarys; for the whole week, Manhattan saved itself 219,000 trips, in line with the MTA’s projections. Drive times into this area of Manhattan during the morning rush fell anywhere from 10 percent (across the Manhattan Bridge) to 39 percent (the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown tunnels) to 65 percent (the Holland Tunnel). Afternoon-peak journey times across Manhattan also fell, between 4 percent and 36 percent. Just outside of the congestion zone, Manhattan’s ring highways—the FDR and the West Side Highway—were mostly less clogged at rush hours, with travel times down by double digits in three directions (though up, by 12 percent, on the FDR southbound). Facing less traffic, bus riders indeed got around more quickly, with passengers on five selected bus lines to or through Manhattan seeing their travel time shaved down by 5 percent to 28 percent.
But the goal of congestion pricing isn’t just to reduce traffic in Manhattan—it’s to encourage drivers to switch to the subway, bus, commuter rail, or, to a lesser extent, cycling or walking. The aim, in other words, is to achieve less traffic while maintaining the same level of economic activity; reducing both traffic and economic activity, as seen during Covid, would hardly count as a success.
The MTA has been noncommittal so far about whether overall transit ridership increased. It’s true, as the MTA points out, that parsing a shift from cars to transit is hard. With only 11 percent of Manhattan’s 1.5 million workers commuting by motor vehicle, while the rest use transit, bicycles, or walk, even a big surge of people switching to transit would result in only a small percentage increase in ridership.
Yet, even on a transit system that moved (as of 2022) 1.9 million people into core Manhattan daily—not only commuters but those coming to see doctors or to enjoy entertainment—the addition of tens of thousands of riders per day shouldn’t be undetectable. In fact, the MTA’s environmental projections for congestion pricing predicted that transit ridership would rise from 1 percent to 3 percent. So it’s disconcerting that the MTA says that “no meaningful uptick in transit ridership . . . has occurred.” Growth should be traceable through fare collection, or just by counting riders at select stations; for example, as one commuter told me, the parking lot at Connecticut’s Fairfield-Black Rock Metro-North station was full last week, for the first time since before Covid. The MTA did say that ridership on selected bus lines from Staten Island was “slightly higher,” but offered no numbers. If the argument is that congestion pricing will push a non-negligible number of travelers from cars to transit—and not away from Manhattan altogether—those individuals should make themselves apparent somewhere, and the MTA should work harder at finding them.
The MTA also glossed over some key distinctions. Of the vehicles deterred from entering Manhattan last week, how many were passenger cars, and not trucks? Yes, most vehicles that enter each day are cars, and trucks are harder to divert—most are bringing goods to the city. But a key goal of congestion pricing was to keep some 4,600 to 6,800 trucks per day from moving through Manhattan without making deliveries, as they have been doing to avoid bridge tolls on other routes. Is that happening? If so, what’s the impact on the Cross-Bronx Expressway and other major routes parallel to Manhattan? Further, are vehicle drivers—both car and truck—switching their journeys to overnight hours, after 9 p.m., to get a 75 percent discount on the congestion fee? Spreading traffic out over more hours, not just deterring it, is another key goal of congestion pricing, so it would be useful to get some information soon.
The MTA should also offer a hint about taxi, Uber, and Lyft trips. Taxi riders entering or traveling within the congestion zone now face an additional 75 cent charge per ride, while for-hire vehicle riders pay a $1.50 fee. One potential downside of congestion pricing is that it might attract more taxi and for-hire vehicle customers—who are already accustomed to paying a convenience premium—onto the now-emptier streets, thereby replacing rather than reducing traffic. This risk is particularly relevant since Lyft has announced that it will rebate the $1.50 fee to its passengers throughout January. It would be helpful to know whether taxi and for-hire vehicle trips to or within core Manhattan have increased, decreased, or stayed the same.
Finally, public safety: though pedestrians and cyclists feel safer in Manhattan with less traffic, counterintuitively, they are not safer: faster speeds kill. Thankfully, no pedestrians were killed in Manhattan crashes during this January time period, just as no pedestrians were killed last year. But the MTA should also make pedestrian, cyclist, and motorist injuries and fatalities a part of its regular congestion-pricing data reporting.
A single week in January is too soon to declare victory, defeat, or anything in between. But we need these numbers sooner rather than later. President-elect Donald Trump has made canceling congestion pricing a priority for his early months in office, reflecting the program’s unpopularity among New York’s Republicans. Congress could act on this; the state’s congressional delegation, led by congestion-pricing opponent Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Staten Island, and Mike Lawker, who represents the Hudson Valley, could leverage the federal government’s regulatory control over transportation to kill the program as part of, say, an extension of the Trump tax cuts, or an increase in the cap on state and local tax deductions. Strangely, New York likely wouldn’t have congestion pricing at all if not for this threat—Governor Hochul rushed to “unpause” the program after the November election to minimize the risk of Trump’s transportation regulators blocking its launch entirely.
That congestion pricing began mere weeks before Trump’s inauguration leaves little time for the program to prove itself on its merits. To evaluate its success or failure, we need as much data as possible—and fast.
Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images